(no subject)
I meant to post more in the last month or two, really I did. Unfortunately circumstances conspired. Hard.
I may have mentioned the depression now and then over the last year or two. I've been improving steadily since we figured out what was going on, helped by a variety of things. Unfortunately a couple of months ago I ended up taking over a contract from one of my colleagues who was frankly sick of it. That should have been my first clue.
They undid eighteen months worth of therapy in a fortnight. Actually, no, that's not fair; they undid it in a couple of days, they just kept the pressure up for the next fortnight.
I don't think I've ever worked in such a negative atmosphere, including my first job which was not a shining example of the IT industry. I was essentially sat in a corner, told not to bother anyone and ignored, and sod the fact that I didn't have any guidance on what I was supposed to be doing beyond "fix the tests." To be honest, I reckon that taking a fortnight to understand a hugely complex undocumented system to the point where I could rewrite the tests (including some distinctly awkward string parsing) so they weren't horribly timing-sensitive wasn't bad going. Unfortunately, Unbeloved Client was under the impression that this was a mere day or two's tidying up before reimplementing what was being tested on a different platform, work I later estimated at twelve weeks. I would have been happy to do the work (not that they were going to be happy to pay for it), just as long as I didn't have to work at their office. After all I'd get better support and supervision at our office.
Since then I've been digging myself out the hole of depression, helped by an afternoon's work with my favourite client and hindered by people ignoring the design work I did nearly a year in favour of making things so much more complicated than they need to be resulting in me doing ridiculous amounts of debugging in C++, a language I loathe with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. No, really. Unfortunately I've spent most of this month trying to get rid of a ridiculously persistent cold that has left me tired and only able to sing for short periods before my voice starts doing odd two-tone things, so even the carol concert last week was a rather unfun experience.
Here's hoping 2015 will be less unpleasant.
I may have mentioned the depression now and then over the last year or two. I've been improving steadily since we figured out what was going on, helped by a variety of things. Unfortunately a couple of months ago I ended up taking over a contract from one of my colleagues who was frankly sick of it. That should have been my first clue.
They undid eighteen months worth of therapy in a fortnight. Actually, no, that's not fair; they undid it in a couple of days, they just kept the pressure up for the next fortnight.
I don't think I've ever worked in such a negative atmosphere, including my first job which was not a shining example of the IT industry. I was essentially sat in a corner, told not to bother anyone and ignored, and sod the fact that I didn't have any guidance on what I was supposed to be doing beyond "fix the tests." To be honest, I reckon that taking a fortnight to understand a hugely complex undocumented system to the point where I could rewrite the tests (including some distinctly awkward string parsing) so they weren't horribly timing-sensitive wasn't bad going. Unfortunately, Unbeloved Client was under the impression that this was a mere day or two's tidying up before reimplementing what was being tested on a different platform, work I later estimated at twelve weeks. I would have been happy to do the work (not that they were going to be happy to pay for it), just as long as I didn't have to work at their office. After all I'd get better support and supervision at our office.
Since then I've been digging myself out the hole of depression, helped by an afternoon's work with my favourite client and hindered by people ignoring the design work I did nearly a year in favour of making things so much more complicated than they need to be resulting in me doing ridiculous amounts of debugging in C++, a language I loathe with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. No, really. Unfortunately I've spent most of this month trying to get rid of a ridiculously persistent cold that has left me tired and only able to sing for short periods before my voice starts doing odd two-tone things, so even the carol concert last week was a rather unfun experience.
Here's hoping 2015 will be less unpleasant.